


In His Father's House

by threewalls



Series: Schirra [46]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: 707-08 OV, Archades, Comfort Sex, Community: kinkfest, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Drama, Father-Son Relationship, Interspecies, M/M, Multi, Partnership, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Sins of the Father, Suicidal Thoughts, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-14
Updated: 2008-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:21:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While waiting for the Strahl to be fixed in Dalmasca, Balthier and Fran lie low in Archades. The city is not good for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Father's House

**Author's Note:**

> Written with beta and much enabling by lynndyre. Prompt: Final Fantasy XII - Fran/Balthier - roleplay – she lets him be who he was.

1.

Once Balthier's ankle has healed enough for him to risk nothing by placing his weight on it, they leave the wreck of an unknown airship that has sheltered them on the Ozmone plains and make for the plains' border with the Wood. They buy weapons from the pair of moogles by the village entrance, and a few potions and other essentials. Balthier closes her fingers over a phoenix feather; Fran tucks the plume into her bodice for the face he makes. Balthier looks out across the sunlit dappled branches towards Eruyt's gates, but he does not ask her any questions.

They touch the teleport crystal together at his count of three, and the rush of magick makes Fran feel as light as air. They go to Bhujerba, Balthier buys himself new clothes, and they sleep on a bed for the first time since Bahamut fell. His fingers smell more like themselves dusted with gunpowder.

The next day, they sit in a tavern soaking up fumes and gossip. The princess has re-taken her kingdom in triumph-- with no small help from the Bhujerba Resistance-- and the Archadian Empire in retreat. She and Balthier brave the narrow paths and low doors of the moogle quarter for a curry bland enough for Fran to eat and rinse it down with moogle moonshine. If they rue the morning, sunbeams like daggers to the brain, they rue it together.

They travel on and on, never three days together in any populated place. As they have crystal-hopped, Balthier has claimed to enjoy "these rustic turns." Fran knows it is not the constant travel that distresses him, but having no fixed point of reference. They live almost as comfortably as they once did, but for travelling by stone rather than ship. What use are teleport stones but to travel, what use chocobo feathers, ice stones, or rotting strips of flesh in civilisation but to sell? They buy new weapons on the Phon Coast, potions at Bur-Omisace, armour in Nalbina, where they bind down her ears to remain hidden. They stay in Balfonheim for two weeks, for there they are unremarkable, and send a letter to Rabanastre care of their hotel.

Fran watches the aerodrome traffic in the distance, the salt-sea crash of the ocean on the pier never quite drowning the thrust-burn of engines. The news must be good, for Balthier's grin is sunshine itself. He has had his hair cut back towards his usual style, but not lightened, no chemicals to trouble her tonight. He waves.

Nono's letter is short and concise, or long and disjointed, if one did not know the code. A joint Dalmascan-Archadian salvage mission has stabilised and secured Bahamut's wreck, as well as scavenging for any survivors. Ashe is privately, but not publicly, upset that Balthier's body has not been discovered amongst the wreckage. She funds repairs to the Strahl, of which Vaan and Penelo have undertaken stewardship as Balthier had requested. Nono vows to prevent any ridiculous alterations to the design in their absence as he oversees the repairs. Basch lives, but under his brother's name.

"You may get your fill of the good Captain yet."

Fran was eating batter-crusted ocean fish and deep fried root vegetables. Balthier picks up a vegetable baton from her plate.

"But, Basch is in Archades."

"Exactly-- I thought she'd find some way to press him into her service, but apparently not. We need somewhere to lie low pretending to be dead until that woman's paid her debt in full. There's nowhere she'd be less likely to look for me. It's perfect, Fran."

 

2.

Unlike the last time, Balthier needs not call in any favours to enter the city. He and she have touched Tsenoble's crystal not three months ago, and furthermore, he has not sold his Sandalwood chop. Under cover of darkness and occasionally feigned amorous drunkenness, they stagger together towards the imperial district. Finding two soldiers of appropriate heights, Balthier distracts them by some verbal disrespect for the uniform; Fran casts sleep. Then, it's a simple matter of asking directions, of claiming to carry a letter from Judge Pyrand to Judge Magister Gabranth, and standing at attention outside the man's doors because Pyrand's a bastard and insisted they hand the letter over in person. It's good to see that the Ninth is as paranoid as ever, and just as useful.

Meeting Basch is very like a farce. Balthier explains that the letter (a folded playbill from Balfonheim that happened to be in his pocket) is for Gabranth's eyes only and this blond hulk of a man must be the Basch they knew for he removes his helm just like that. Fran does not wait any longer to remove her helmet, shaking out her hair and ears. There is nothing left but for Balthier to do the same.

"You live-- you both--"

The haircut is different, and somewhat less flattering, but the scar is the same and tellingly old. Basch's voice is still bound by Dalmascan rather than Archadian cadences. He clasps their hands too long and looks delighted. Balthier steps forward to thump his bracer against Basch's backplate, putting the man out of his misery. It's all the permission that Basch needs to pull him into a hug.

Balthier has been accustomed to find that everything he wants from a man can be elicited by flirting, rather than any further physical investment. But it seems different with Basch, though Balthier cannot say why. He can feel Fran's eyes on the back of his neck. They make him feel warm.

"Something tells me your story will be long," Basch says.

"Ah, like I said: the leading man never dies."

Basch pours them neat inches of whiskey while they doff the rest of their disguises; the armour would only slow them down when the time comes to leave. They pile the pieces behind Basch's broad, blackwood desk. Balthier notes Fran eyeing it up and nods to convey his own agreement of its potential. Fran first, he thinks, for he has only so much courage.

The door opens without warning.

"Oh!"

"Your Excellency." Basch's metal ankles chime when he strikes to attention.

The boy looks even more ridiculous dressed in someone's cut-down idea of imperial robes than he did as "Lamont," though the gaping open mouth is perhaps his worst offence against fashion. Balthier wonders if they've had to bend the diadem to fit.

Larsa sends his soldiers outside the door, which would limit their exit if Balthier had intended to leave any way but out the window. If they've cut back the branches on the tree across the path outside, this is going to hurt. Larsa says he has a proposition for them.

"Please, hear me out. These past months we have worked hard to stabilise the networks of power that are the backbone of the Empire, but there is one area, in this city no less, that I have not the expertise to untangle nor had the trusted agent to act in my stead. The Draklor Laboratories are at present temporarily closed under the pretext of a period of mourning. I need someone to vet what remains at Draklor, the people, the projects. If I knew my brother, he would not have trusted many more than your father with his plans, but that sky fortress cannot have been built by one man alone."

"You'd appoint the sky pirate Balthier to your ministry of Science? Perhaps I'm enjoying basking in the afterlife of my reputation."

"I won't mince words appealing to your patriotism, but we both know that any serpents still lurking in Draklor will have festered under your father's aegis. You are uniquely suited to this position, you must agree. I would appoint Ffamran Mid Bunansa, the prodigal son of the late Cidolfus, to take up his father's legacy."

Balthier could almost admire the boy's rhetoric, if its trap had not been laid by another. Not enough to kill the man, no, nor divert his falling death-trap. One last leash, old man?

Balthier looks at Fran, and she looks at him. No objections, then.

"And your price?"

Larsa names an extravagant figure, a salary not a lump sum, though naturally, the contract would include bonuses for early completion. Larsa wants Draklor functional and open for business soon.

"Paid into whatever account you've given Gabranth."

Basch startles, but Fran is beside him. Fran will explain.

"What are friends for? I would trust a friend before royalty. Friends are not usually so unforthcoming meeting in their promises."

Larsa only smiles, and it's so Archadian to hide his triumph behind his teeth that Balthier wants to throttle him. "You will have the Ninth working their utmost to prevent information of your re-appearance from reaching Dalmasca."

 

3.

Before he can begin on Draklor, there must be the funeral.

Ffamran Mid Bunansa has been appointed Temporary Head of Draklor for the duration of Balthier's enquiries, and he has re-opened the house in Tsenoble. Imperial affidavit confirming his identity or no, the family will want to see this young man claiming their name with their own eyes, and a funeral is a splendid opportunity to stage a piece of theatre.

As his father's son and heir, it is Balthier's prerogative to organise the event. Aunt Dorotha sends a card in response to his, reminding him that she has a widow's many lonely hours to assist him with her brother's funeral if he wishes, but he does not (he sends only his regards in response). Balthier invites family to the third degree and no further, at once because his father was the third child, as because this limits the guest list fewer than fifty, the most the housekeeper says will comfortably fit in their greater dining hall. He invites the few judges who retain links to Draklor, as well as the only one who Balthier wishes to attend, and the head of every major division of Draklor. Balthier hopes to place names and notes to faces before he commences what will be interminable numbers of interviews, and for the whole sorry waste of time and preparation to have some value.

Balthier posts a notice in both papers the customary week before the event, and waits, but no crying mothers with crying babies arrive on the doorstep at Number 237, Tsenoble, no young women insisting on a discreet, private piece of his inheritance. He wishes he were more surprised, but his father was his work, even before the Jagd Difohr, before Giruvegan and that thing he called his "Venat." In his youth, Balthier had seen his father have few enough friends-- almost all a party to the work, though that had seemed a more glorious thing back then. But Zecht and Ghis are both dead, likewise the Prince. Besides Draklor, his father left no loose ends he can find.

The funeral is not the state function Aunt Dorotha might have wanted, her two youngest daughters in particularly modish mourning dress with no eligible members of the judiciary to admire them, but no one is surprised to see him once they ascertain that he is Ffamran.

"You were so close," Aunt Remona says, offering him her hand to kiss. "It's a pity you couldn't come back earlier. He missed you so."

Balthier knew exactly how much his father missed him, the exact gil figure posted with the Ninth. He missed him enough to allow the Ninth to set hunters after Ffamran, to allow lizards after him, too distracted to notice that it was lizards. (It wasn't lizards until the fourth year, so he lays that entirely at Basch's brother's very cold feet.) However, his father was the black nanna of his family, ignoring politics for science, and gaining imperial patronage nonetheless. Balthier doesn't know if Cid loved his brother or his sister, but no one of the three has ever appeared to like another, at least in front of Balthier.

He and his father were never observant of any religion, so there will be no blessing of his father's departed spirit. Nor, of course, is there a body to view, but the boy emperor has a tale for this situation as well, a signed sheet of paper attesting that Cidolfus Demen Bunansa died in battle. His father the war hero, to match his Excellency the Emperor's most recently departed brother. Balthier might fault the child imagination, but the simplest lies are the most efficient, easiest to maintain.

Since the letter is all he has, Balthier makes it the centrepiece, models his event on a memorial service rather than the standard corpse-viewing. The lack of body also cuts the festivities down by several hours, the journey to the Bunansa family sepulchre. No doubt everyone is pleased to avoid that.

Between the third and fourth courses, Uncle Quillan gets up to say a few words, taking twenty minutes to riff on the sorrow that Cidolfus had been the youngest, and the first to go, and other suitable sentiments paraphrased from the volumes of his library. Balthier had claimed his grief was too great to speak on, but more to the point, he could not regret losing the opportunity to speak before an audience whose main concern was what the fourth course would be.

After Quillan, Basch, as the emperor's representative, reads aloud the emperor's letter commending his father's glorious and manifold works in service to the Empire, and pins a ribbon with a little bit of metal to Balthier's black tailored shirt. Balthier dislikes the close cut of it across his shoulders and back, but it's the sort of thing that Ffamran would have enjoyed, the vain child.

Aunt Remona finds him after the pudding, a girl much younger than she is in tow. "This is Coppice Oriana, Baryram's daughter. You might remember her from the year you spent in our house. She was Isela Antonin's companion then, but she's been working at your father's laboratory now for..."

"Two years."

The girl is neither lovely nor unlovely, red-brown hair that doesn't quite shine enough to merit the name of the metal turned into a modest coif of curls. She's prettier when she smiles, but her eyes can't quite hide her nervous, hopeful hunger when she meets his gaze. Balthier hopes not everyone at Draklor is going to look at him like this.

"You work at Draklor? In which division?"

"I am-- I was personal assistant to Researcher Abeles. He was the Head of--"

"I know who he is."

Abeles is also, in departmental parlance, a war hero like so many of the scientists loaned to the 13th Bureau. Coppice must be over twenty-five, if she was a lady's companion when he was fifteen seven years ago. Her fingers are bare of the rings that would mark her matrona or praematrona. She's a girl of his station who has been working for a living longer than he's been a pirate. Balthier begins to see where this is going.

"I'm not looking for a new housekeeper." By which they all understand he means a mistress.

The girl looks like someone had cast Stop upon her, the smile static. He wonders what Remona promised her, kindly Aunt Remona, who tried to get him to propose so many times that whole horrid year his father was away.

Remona is not flustered by his barb. "I thought perhaps that your _friend_ , being new to the city, might welcome a guide. You're no doubt too busy to take her shopping for some proper clothes, but..."

If no one was surprised to see Ffamran's return, they have been very careful around Fran. He knows what they all must think of her, though his family and the circles they move in, and the servants they hire, are all too well-bred to make open reference to it. Balthier turns his head to look for her, and finds her beside him, her long smooth strides ending on sharp points. Fran wears black, as she always does, her armour polished and oiled in respect.

Fran looks at him before speaking, and he gives her his undivided attention. When he was fifteen, he didn't know how to deal with Remona, short of making love to the matrons to avoid the attentions of their daughters. He whispers Basch's name as low as he can, knowing that only she will hear.

"Thank you, but I have visited your city before," Fran says. "Judge Magister Gabranth has been asking for Ffamran."

They go talk to Basch about nothing at all, about the weather, until Balthier can stomach conversing with his family again, and with one eye on the clock. At ten, his housekeeper helps him usher out the stragglers; Basch tells that his office door is always open. There. So much for the family.

Balthier says good-night to Fran on the the main stairwell, she staying down, he walking up. He has his father's room, for Ffamran's has been shut since he boarded at the Judicial Akademy all those years ago. He thinks he once asked the housekeeper to open and air it, but a room is just a room and all of Ffamran's new clothes fill his father's wardrobe.

Fran is in the Green Room, the guest room. He misses her.

Balthier doesn't dare give them ammunition, any confirmation of their nasty, petty slurs. If his guests are generous, they will be speaking of her as his mistress, and if not, as his dog or worse. No wonder Remona thinks he needs the love of a good woman. Can they not imagine he needs Fran for something finer?

His sheets are a poor substitute for her skin, his pillow for her shoulder, his cyclic internal monologue for her direct, concise counsel. The bed's so big. He misses Fran, but this, Archades, will be temporary. Stroking roughly for long enough brings himself to spend. Balthier finds only soporific weariness in the act, but the weariness more welcome than his thoughts' scattershot arcs.

Tomorrow, finally, he can begin on Draklor.

 

4.

The bed in the room that Balthier has put her in is too soft, the many feather pillows like nothing under her head, and the quilts smothering and hot. Fran sleeps above the covers, when she sleeps at all. She has never needed the eight hours that make Balthier fit for company.

At night, this house is different, a quiet unpopulated by serving maids and footmen, an impersonal quiet that does not descend for her alone. By day, Fran must walk loudly, lest she frighten the staff unawares and cause them to drop what they carry, but at night, she can walk as quietly as a ghost. Before the funeral, Balthier stayed in his father's office and she could stay with him if they left the door unlocked, but now he goes to Draklor.

"No, just no. I've spent a week reading these peoples' project reports now and, no. They would want to experiment on you, Fran. You can have the whole city, but, please-- not Draklor."

There is a door in the wall of the room she has been given, a dusty outline cut of the wallpaper, through which viera ears could hear a draft and viera fingernails could pry open. The passage behind it led to a narrow, cobwebed staircase, which led to Balthier's bedroom. She finds him fallen asleep in an armchair, arms curling in on himself, and a book slumped open by his feet. Fran removes his glasses, folds them onto the table beside the armchair. She lies on the bed, which does not smell of him, and watches him sleep. In this house, Balthier does not touch her, not even with his eyes. Fran wakes with the sunrise, and shuts the door behind her.

When Basch sends them a letter, Balthier sends her to the palace with his apologies. She has a Sandalwood chop to take her anywhere in the city, and the city is no different than her last visit. Too many people too busy with their lives to notice a viera amongst them. She makes soldiers drop their swords in the palace, startled and angry, and then, with more visits, they remember her and her scroll with the emperor's seal, and her sparring matches with Basch. Archades suits him more than Balthier, but he has made the choice to live here. They go rounds for points, matching swords, then staves, and another time he carries an axe and she a dagger. The last, they start with bare-knuckle boxing, but at the third round Fran knocks him to the ground with a kick, and Basch grabs her foot, and they finish rounds four and five and six when one or the other taps out on the floor.

Fran can smell him, ripe human sweat, blood rushing close to the skin, and human musk thick in the hair under his arms. Basch wears armour to protect his groin, but he wants her, blue eyes nothing now but black. Fran can smell herself, is disoriented by it, when Basch lies with his full weight above her, asking hoarsely if she would yield.

She could have him, afterwards, when they stand in his office overlooking the city: his desk look sturdy and his rugs thick. But then Basch asks her about Balthier, and Fran feels a spark run down her spine, more than the simple heat and perfume from her match with Basch. She sets down her water glass. Fran says that she will remind Balthier to visit.

"How is Basch? Healthy, I expect."

Time passes. Fran goes hunting; she buys a gun. There are marks a plenty always for the canny hunter, and she finds several that frequent the environs around Archades. There is one in the Sochen Cave Palace, and it is easy. And then one in Tchita, then one in the Palace and two in Tchita, and one in the Cerobi Steppe. Before she realises, Fran is in Balfonheim, and her three day jaunt has become a ten day trip.

She watches the airships descend and lift, and the listens to rustle of the ocean. The aerodrome smells of engine oil and cloudstone, the hum of glossair flow sounding in time with her blood. A young man in overalls leaves the pack of his friends to approach her, ask her if she'd like to go for a ride in his ship. He's slim and brown and smells equally terrified and aroused; he stares at her ears and her breasts. She thinks: "I would rather Basch than this."

Fran teleports to Archades, and unlocks the front door, just in time to walk into the evening meal, red Cerobi mud still on her boots. The servants stare, but Balthier does not, eating calmly and sipping his wine.

"Was it good hunting in the... was the Cave Palace where you said you were going?"

That night, on her bed, Fran's hands smell of gunpowder, but it isn't enough. She stacks the pillows down the side of the bed behind her back, but they are too soft to fool her senses.

In the morning, after Balthier has gone to Draklor, Fran knocks on the door to the housekeeper's flat.

 

5.

Fran is not immediately apparent when he gets home, which is just as well. He locks himself in his office and takes a sheaf of papers from his safe.

Fran used to leave messages on his desk, or with the housekeeper. Where is his housekeeper? Perhaps she's gone hunting again. Fran, not the housekeeper. She's away for longer and longer each time-- it was a week this time longer than she had said. He'd convinced himself that she wasn't coming back, but then she did, and what could he say that wasn't a pathetically transparent ploy for her company. He can't make her stay here, if there's nothing here that she wants to stay for.

Perhaps she's gone to the palace, for a week is a long time for Fran to go without. Perhaps she's fucking Basch right now, bent over his imperial blackwood desk. Just as well when Ffamran's equipment is rather hit and miss in its functionality these days. He hopes Basch is making her happy. They should be happy. They should be very happy.

He closes his eyes and presses his knuckles into the sockets. He misses her, but Fran needs him not at all.

Ffamran hates Draklor. He hates these people, all the petty inter-departmental politics, let alone what they find fascinating to study. His father gave the lion's share of funding to energy research and skyship augmentation, but he wasn't beyond funding other projects of potential value to the empire. There's nothing coming out of the biology department or human medicine that doesn't make him sick, but that's not the criterion he has to sort through the morass. If he shut down everything morally questionable in Draklor, only the cleaning and ancillary staff would be employed. Perhaps not even them.

This was supposed to be easy, weeks not months, but they all lie. More than a thousand employees he has to vet, and they all lie and their reports lie, or can be assumed to lie, which is much the same thing. Ffamran hates this city. He hates his father. He hates himself.

The air in his office is thick and close. There are no windows, and he must have the door locked for these letters. If he thought the letter to Basch was difficult, regret not visiting, missing the opportunity to improve their acquaintance, etc., the letter to Fran is impossible. He can't bear to burn the drafts, just in case there's something amongst them that he can finally shape to a coherent text, but every one ends the same: he is sorry. He gets ink on his handkerchief, the blue-black blossoming on the damp white cotton, and gets out another to press against his tears.

The housekeeper knocks on the door. Ffamran shouts through to tell her to go away. But she knocks again; there's something she insists he should see.

This housekeeper is not the one that knew him as a boy, who retired when they shut the house for his father to journey after Giruvegan. This housekeeper was the one hired for his father after his return, who kept the house running to budget while his father started talking to the walls. She frightens Ffamran.

He blots his most recent epistolary attempt and re-sheaves the letters in order, placing them back in the safe with his loaded gun. He splashes his face with tepid water from the washbasin, and wipes it clean. He tells himself that his eyes are not that pink, but he isn't sure he believes himself.

There's a crowd at the foot of the stairs, looking up. More staff than he thought he had. The housekeeper spots him and nods. She says, "you can come out now, my dear."

Ffamran sees a tall woman coming down the stairs, dark skin, her silks in the secondary shades only Northerners can pull off: pink, orange, a vibrant green. They've found him a Northerner instead of Fran; no, this won't do. Except her shoes are black sandals that he recognises. Her toes are painted, but there are only three of them. Her ears must be tightly folded beneath the turbaned headdress.

Oh, Fran.

"Who did this?"

The servants' crowd moves back as his voice rises and his language declines. Discretion may be the better part of valour, but this is wrong, so wrong, beyond any wrong he had thought he had wrought upon Fran. He tells them that they are bigoted and petty and blind. They are jealous and close-minded, and provincial. Ffamran picks up a Shufan vase, imported from the Eastern Islands, and pitches it across the floor. A footman stupid enough to ask "you don't like your beast-whore in civilised clothes?" get a mouthful of Balthier's fist.

"You will not make her like all of you!"

He pulls back his arm for another swing, but someone catches it. Fran presses the edges of her nails into the soft skin of his forearm.

"I asked Adelheid for fashion guidance."

He crumples under her persistent gaze. He can't believe Fran would lie, even here. She allows him back his arm, and bends her head towards the hands he raises a moment later, untucking and unwinding the fabric ribbon from her head.

"Why would you let them do this to you?"

She holds his hand and watches him. "Not here."

Ffamran takes her to his bedroom, not his father's but the room he grew up in, where the furniture has been stripped of sheets and dusted, clean linens on the bed and new curtains. He remembers ones with constellations marked on the fabric.

He asks again, why?

"Is there any other place for me in your life here?"

Fran has no tears to match the tone to her voice, but Ffamran cries enough for both of them. He apologises, that he wasn't trying to hold her here; she tells him she has spent months trying to find ways to stay. He apologises, and she shakes her head.

"Why would you want to stay here?"

"I would rather be Ffamran's than be alone. Life is too long for that."

"'Ffamran' is everything I ran from. Ffamran was spoilt and vain and as-- shuttered as they are out there."

Fran steps closer, her shoes touching his shoes. It's very simple to slide his arms around her.

"Ffamran is who Balthier was before I met him. Do you fault my curiosity?"

Balthier sighs. "I used to lie there at night, staring up out of the window, dreaming of the sky, the women I'd meet. I never thought of someone like you." He has to laugh. "Little Ffamran wouldn't have known what to do with someone like you."

"Ffamran did not know women?"

He thinks she's teasing, but Ffamran would not know how to read her face.

"No, he... he did."

Ffamran wouldn't have known a viera, but Fran is the only viera Balthier has ever touched like this.

"He would know these clothes, how to unfasten them better than I would." Now he knows she's teasing, as she slides his hands to the fastenings of her skirt.

Ffamran undresses her slowly, half-afraid of what he will uncover as each slip of silk drops away, but a viera is much like a woman, legs, hips and-- yes, her hair is white everywhere. He stands there simply touching her, stroking the fine furry down of her skin, breasts, sides, the wonderful curves of her rear.

"Oh, you-- you have a tail." It flicks against his palm. Fran strokes over the heat of his groin, and yes, Ffamran wants her, in spite of himself, and he dares a kiss. She sits on his bed, stroking herself as she watches him strip.

Fran allows him to lie between her legs, to lie over her, but beyond that, she is nothing like an Archadian woman. She tells him when she likes something and when she wants something else, she tells him that as well. Ffamran wouldn't be brave enough to taste her, but he strokes at her wetness, already so wet. But what Fran wants is to take his cock in her palm, to guide it into her.

Balthier lasts exactly as long as Ffamran would have.

He wakes when it is truly dark but for the amber lamplight streaming through the leaves of the tree outside his window. It's raining, a liquid shuffle against the window-panes.

He is still on top of Fran. He is still inside her. He considers apologising, or moving, but Fran's arms hold him too securely in place. However, Ffamran would not take the previous slight on his prowess lying down. Ffamran, it seems, is ready to go again. Oh, to be fifteen again.

"Your turn?"

Fran makes a soft noise in agreement, and Ffamran strives to make her make louder ones. He's surprised by how much she likes fucking, how easily she'll shift her limbs to let him try all the positions he's only read about. She lets him take on hands and knees; this makes her the loudest, makes her scratch the bed-clothes.

"You like that?"

"Deep. Ngh-- good."

"Ah. Roll over? I want to try something else."

Ffamran wedges a pillow under her buttocks to tilt her hips and hooks her knees over his shoulders. He fingers her some more to make sure she's aroused enough for this, four fingers, oh, fuck, yes, and she growls at _him_ to stop teasing.

It could have been three strokes, or six, or nine, but her body goes suddenly rigid, her calls silenced for lack of breath, and then she is suddenly pliant, blinking up at him in shock. She rolls her hips, clenches tender inside.

"Did you--?" Ffamran would not be able to resist asking.

"Yes," Fran says, and, "down." This isn't the best position for her to get her hands around him, though she makes a valiant attempt.

He gets out of bed to look for a towel. She starts sneezing, and, oh, he, it, yes, that. Balthier throws the soiled towel across the room. It helps. Fran licks his nose, and they kiss properly. He's missed the near-cutting edges of her teeth, the thrust of her tongue in his mouth, but he's tired, she's tired and his cock has already fallen back asleep.

Ffamran's bed is a tall single, narrower than his father's double bed, but very like the bunks on the Strahl. He rolls onto his side, back against the wall, and Fran arranges herself to match. Her tail twitches, once, against his belly, and then Fran pulls his arm across her waist.

They sleep.

 

6.

Fran rises after the sun, but before the household, untangling herself from Balthier's embrace. His shirt covers her torso well enough.

The office door is simple enough to pick with a length of wire appropriated from the kitchen. The safe behind the painting might have proved more difficult if the combination had not been Balthier's-- Ffamran's birthday. Inside, she finds what must be his notes on Draklor. He spends enough time in here gathering ink stains on his hands. Fran reads enough to learn the true problem, and then, when the horror dawns-- she races back to his bedroom with a handful of hateful paper.

Her cast of Esuna wakes Balthier, and she casts Fire into the cold fireplace grate. She throws the letter he would have sent Basch into the flames and watches it blacken and burn.

"Basch does not need this."

Fran burns the letters Balthier would have sent her. They burn with the blues and greens of salt, like driftwood.

"I do not want the Strahl. I do not want your money, or your house. I do not want your apologies, or so few of your words as _that_."

Balthier has pulled the sheets up to his chest, what little protection they afford him, when Fran falls on him. She pins him with her hands and knees, almost too angry to speak.

He starts to laugh. Fran casts Esuna again, just in case.

"Oh no, I was going to swallow a bullet, and my gun is the office, which I assume you've already found."

Fran digs her nails into his tender, teasing, infuriating flesh.

"If you have all these plans, these contingencies for everyone in Draklor the event of your death, why can we not leave?"

Balthier starts laughing again, but his muscles have all unclenched. He angles his head up to kiss her, and she lets him. "That's a wonderful idea, Fran. Wonderful."

Balthier raises a fist at the ceiling. "Fuck you, Father. Fuck your city, and your experiments, and your plans. I wanted you to like me; I never wanted to be you."

Fran watches Balthier carefully, to see if he is done, to see if she may trust his sanity again.

"Yes, Fran. We'll leave. It's been months. The Strahl must be ship-shape by now, and if not, we can finish her ourselves. If you still want to fly with me--?"

"Yes."

"Then, we will fly."

Fran hears the door open behind her, feels the draft against her bare legs. Balthier's expression is exultant.

"Master Ffamran, breakfast will be served at... later." Adelheid sets the tray down on the piece of furniture nearest the door, and shuts it, very firmly.

Balthier shrugs as best as he is able where he is. The sheet slips, not quite as artlessly as he supposes. "Well, I think my shirt becomes you."

He runs his hands under the shirt and pulls Fran down against him.

 

Epilogue.

Dear Judge Magister Gabranth,

This folder contains His Excellency's requested restructuring of the Draklor Laboratories. Kuelshammer (a compatriot!) is least likely to cause problems if appointed Head in my father's place, but Lysari might be better for political purposes unless the brat doesn't like the way his brother votes in the Senate.

Invest my salary in Mooglecraft.

F. sends her regards. We have business in Dalmasca.

Sorry to have missed you. A proper visit next time, I promise.

B.

PS. Burn this after reading. Other Bureaus must have openings; get out of the Ninth while you still can.

\---

The postscript also contains a cartoon across the bottom of the page: two little figures (one with long ears, both with sacks of loot) running away from a fanged figure in a skirt waving a rolling pin.

Basch does not burn the letter. He does leave the Ninth.

The next visit is a better one.


End file.
